Ty's misery face.

Misery Scale

Here's how it goes:

Anna: Tyler on a scale of one to ten what's your misery level?"

Tyler: "Eight for sure." (Ty never gets below an eight-depending on the crowd and heat level)

So we got so used to this that Ty started abbreving--"Anna, misery level? I'm at an eight"

This would come to be our most beloved phrase for the next few days.

So our program gave us one free weekend off and of course everyone immediately jet sets. So I choose Nice-in the South of France. I make the plans.

Hostel.

Train.

Boat.

Some how I managed to blow it on all of them.

I have never been away from Hunter for more than three hours-so he and Scotty Scott Scott Scott come to tell me bye and immediately stage one depression sets in. I leave to got to the train station alone at night (mood = afraid & sad).

The French also have this really cool Israeli thing going on where they dress their military up in uniforms and give them automatic weapons to patrol train stations, the Eiffel Tower, etc. So I push my way through the crazies to these armed machine-gunists and ask them where the regional trains are to Nice. They direct me. A few minutes later the same pack is coming back up to me trying (they don't speak English) to tell me the train is cancelled or something and to come with them.

So the armed soldiers take me down this long dark tunnel/alley thing and suddenly my only thought is "Great I fell for it-I'm the dumb tourist who went." But I survived.

The train was cancelled until the next morning. Shoot me in the face.

Friday

Nonetheless we arrive in Nice and it is so pretty! It is a major hub for trains and planes and is the largest city in the South. This of course brings in a lot of rift-raft (r&r, r-squared-however you feel most comfortable saying it). This makes it scary. This also makes Cannes, Antibes, Saint Tropez, Monte Carlo, Ville-sur-France, etc much more ideal locations for a vacation.

We get to the hostel which is in a good location-falling down but good location nonetheless. In hostels everyone sleeps in the same rooms-camp style and shares the bathrooms, etc.

Rasputin checks us in-this should have been a good sign for me to bow out gracefully. If you aren't sure who Rasputin is-only look him up during the daytime and preferably when you're not alone.

I didn't take a picture of the hostel-somethings are better off forgotten.

On the Promenade d'Anglais (Walkway of the English). It was built along the sea during the mid-1800s for English vacationers who came down to the Mediterranean.

This is the major square in Nice which was right down from the hostel. It was super Mediterranean-esque.

Seaside!

The most famous hotel in Nice- Hotel Negresco! Of course it is under renovation during the visit but still so cool to finally see in person. Pretty sure Tyler could have cared less- he saw it and went "misery level rising". For the trip we extended the scale to 15.

On top of a cliff-or going up to the top anyway. Ty is sporting the "Anna head tilt"-so rude. Oh and Tyler is not wearing the man-purse here. Thank goodness. Maybe this is why we didn't take many pictures. Just because we are in Europe that doesn't give us the liberty to further the many French blunders (man purses, manpris (man capris), male shorty shorts, man tight pants, man-any other bad fashion that resembles women clothing).

Top of the cliff overlooking the Bay of Angels.

On the way to this market area that has been open for hundreds of years. whatever. now it's a pick-pocket haven.

Saturday

In the harbor on a boat leaving to go to Saint Tropez for the day. So pretty!

On the boat. We always play the "guess the nationality" game. I am sure there was a boat full of Cubans-I mean the main guy was wearing a Havana hat. Tyler is convinced they were Pakistani. Whatever.

Just saying Cuba is the new thing. I have met a ton of people who all can't wait to go- that's right- to Canada/the Bahamas-then on to Fidel. I have no idea why. All I can't think is omg Che Guevara-who is apparently the new found fashion icon. Yeah it's cool over here to sport Che on the shirt/necklace/pin/etc. D.U.M.B.

This is just one of mine and Ty's "mini-fights". He was cold no wait he couldn't see over the dumb tourists no wait he wants to sit on the bottom deck oh wait Anna I thought you said you were coming down and on and on and on. So I go down to sit with him and immediately am getting splashed by water and salt. After 30 minutes I had a finite layer of sea salt covering me- sick. I was mad at him. This starts our day of high tension- wrong. We had already had a blow up attempting to find the boat.

I cannot blame it all on him. I am not great at directions- I am not great at knowing left from right. By not great I mean- I don't know my left from right. And I get really mean when I get hot. My face starts burning from my acne medicine and I loose all capacity to be civil. True story.

Views along the coast. Ahh I also took a picture of the hospital where Brangelina had their baby. Kind of cool. But France? You know they flew in American doctors.

When Hunter sees these pictures he goes "Oh my gosh you're wearing a bow?" I go "Like oh my gosh don't I always?" shocker. You know you can't really get others to take pictures of you-not safe. So we tried multiple times to get some.

So we ride this boat for 2.5 hours down the coast. We go to:

Nice

Antibes

Cannes

Islands off Cannes

Other Places

Saint Tropez

Guess what big deal houses we saw:

1. SIR Sean Connery

First of all I have been Extreme Elitist Patrol since Thursday night. Please keep this in mind.

2. SIR? Elton John

3. Mercedes-Benz family

4. Chelsea's owner (English soccer team)

5. Gorbachev

6. Tom Selleck

7. Bridget Bardot (just learned who she was)

8. Other Really Big Deals

9. Super bummed they didn't show us Posh and David Beckham's house-you know they have one.

10. Al-Saud family home (Saudi Arabia's royal family) (talk about Elitist) (yeah Elitist is now forever capitalized)

I really had a lot of pictures from St. Tropez but I have no idea where they went. So basically St. Tropez is this small-quintessentially mediterranean village that harbors billionaires. So we get off the boat and have all day here. We start walking to hopefully find a beach but instead find a harbor full of Big Deals. This is no joke. There was gigantic yacht after gigantic yacht. So really unless you are a billionaire yacht owner there is no point in going to Saint Tropez. There are no beaches. We attempt to get to some via the tourist information office. I am convinced they immediately labeled us as category 2 rift-raft and sent us to some secluded beach by way of taxi. Seriously though we get to this "beach" and realize that it bore an awful resemblance to Siberia (also worth wikipedia-ing). Pretty sure that the strip of "hotels and restaurants" was a section of falling town trailer houses selling hamburgers. As I told my mother--pretty sure Posh Spice wasn't there-so there was no reason why I should be.

So after the initial dip of depression we call back the taximan who tells me "I think it better if you speak English" to come and pick us up to take us back to Saint Tropez.

We then spend the rest of the day strolling around looking for Gorb. to come out and play. For some reason all of these yachts were from George Town, Cayman Islands. Long trip. It is pretty cool because all of the yachts have the French flag and their own flag flying. There were lots of Italians. You can see where everyone is from.

There was great shopping however! Not that we did any but ideally it is a shopper's paradise.It was saturday and a lot of shops were closed.

We go back to Nice and meet up with some girls from our program. There is a torrential storm so we go back to our hostel.

Monaco

Sunday, we get to Monaco via the rift-raft train. All the cool kids clearly copter-in, yacht-in, or Benz-in. The tension gets high on my part- Tyler was good. For some reason I was in a bad mood early on. Maybe this was because I woke up to find a couple in the hostel (old couple) in the twin bed (same twin bed) together-ABOVE me? Idk. But for some reason I was terrible for the few hours or so.

First we go to the The Highness Gracious Sovereign King Lord Prince Albert's castle. (This is how they refer to him-everytime & I'm not exaggerating on the adjectives)

Pyongyang.

aka Monaco. This is district with the Prince's palace aka Europe's Most Bald Bachelor instead of Most Eligible Bachelor.Sarcasm aside-it's beautiful! We also had perfect weather. Like 65 and breezy with minimal sunshine.

Then we separate and Ty goes to the aquarium. I couldn't help it. I didn't want to go- I'm not into the aquatic. We meet back up for lunch. We eat with some Brits who dramatically change Tyler's opinion of Brits in general. Before they were all pale and had bad teeth. Now they are cool and maybe he wants to go to England.

We then may or may not have rode around on a little tourist trolley. By may or may have not I mean we most certainly did.

It took us to the three main districts- I have forgotten alllll of their names except Monte Carlo and am too lazy to look them up. But since Monaco is very hilly and by hilly I mean mountainous it was nice not to have to walk.

Apparently EMBB (Europe's Most Bald Bachelor) is really into parks and nature. So this is a seaside park.

The view from the backside of the Palace. This is the mini-harbor with the trillion dollar yachts instead of the main one where the gazaillion dollar ones sit.

After the trolley ride we walk alllll the way back to Monte Carlo. Elitist haven. Seriously.

This is the Casino! Monaco is everything I ever thought it would be. It does not disappoint. At any moment I felt James Bond could appear. Well, him or the Saudi King. Both = the same kind of fascinating.

Hotel de Paris.

It goes like this:

Rolls Royce

Maserati

Aston Martin

12 year old driving a Maserati

Bently

Bently

Endless supply of red Ferraris

Maybach

Mclaren

Pagani Zonda

Rolls again

etc.

and on and on and on

Audi

Benz

Porshe

all three-sorry old news

Monte Carlo is perfectly wonderful. Elitist activity yes but wonderful nonetheless.

Picture of a painting of Princess Grace in front of the Casino.

It was pretty legendary just being here. I thought it was great.

BUT being the political scientists we are- we must conclude that Monaco can also be referred to as Pyongyang- the ominous capital of North Korea. The only place I have seen a leader's picture in EVERY everything is in a Communist dictatorship. . . & Monaco. I am sorry EMBB the free cable doesn't do it for me. Maybe this should be further investigated.

We then had a night train back to Paris. We went from Monaco to Nice then Nice to Paris. Our train was at 9 pm and we weren't scheduled to arrive until 7:45 am. MISERY at its finest.

Apparently we failed to receive the memo that it was the geriatrics train. I mean I know it happens to all of us but maybe they should be supervised. They were seriously out of control the entire time. All we had were chairs that supposedly reclined- but I am not going to use the verb recline- it was more like seats that gave a little more than my mom's wooden chairs. We faced this ALLL night and by night I mean the geriatrics had lights on all night. So it was more like "Anna and Tyler took the day train".

We arrived in Paris in time for Tyler (pronounced by the French-Teeler) to go straight to his class. I on the other hand went home to wash my hair.

I got torrential knots again. I go, "Ty how am I going to get these knots out?" He responds-those aren't knots-those are African dreads".

My mother and Aunt Sharon can directly attest to their severity. Luckily Tyler brushed many of them out so as to leave me a nice poodle-poof for the ride home. He kept saying, "can't you just put that in a pony tail." I responded: "Absolutely not".

FAMOUS last words of John Tyler. . .

In class the next day a girl goes, "So Tyler how was Nice?"

Tyler with a monotone pitch replies: "Too soon."

This seems negative but I can't really convey the difficulty I have when it's just kids trying to survive in the world alone. Like hitting rock bottom in the hostel- I always think it is a larger reflection of my future life. So I get panicky and have to get reassurance from my mother that it's temporary and that just because I experience something so terrifying it doesn't mean I'm subjected to it for my future.

Also I fail to think things through- like oh when I exit the train station theoretically I should know where to go/what to do next. Moves like these make traveling difficult.

So in sum I guess I am going to have to have Marv come with me wherever I go-for the rest of my life.